


Last of the Yellow Ribbons

by KDee (sign_of_five)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-17
Updated: 2013-05-01
Packaged: 2017-12-08 17:55:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/764276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sign_of_five/pseuds/KDee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After three long years and the painful process of trying to move on, John and Sherlock reunite in a scene reminiscent of the past. They struggle with feelings that built up and blossomed during the other's absence. Takes place three years after Reichenbach Fall.</p><p>(The title, in case you were wondering, is a reference to the WWII yellow ribbons that they would put on homes where a family member was away at war. It came out of the beautiful mind of Tracy, another member of @sign_of_five.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Battle Wounds

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of @sign_of_five's (das me! i'm in dat!) project to do fandom works whenever we can. 
> 
> Please keep in mind:  
> 1\. Being a semi-dedicated student and complete procrastinator, there will be no schedule behind my updates. Whenever I write a chapter and get time to post it, thats when it will be posted. I am aiming for less than a month between updates, if that makes you feel better.  
> 2\. I'm writing this for a friend. She's sees everything first. I will not post anything until I hand her a paper copy and she reads it. Even if she gets sick with some terrible disease, you will just have to wait. Suck it up.  
> 3\. I'm not from London. These characters are. If you have any suggestions or want to point out some slang that they would never use, that would be mucho appreciated. If you hate, I will ignore you and purposefully kill off all of the characters. Deal.  
> 4\. I don't own the characters. All credit to Doyle and BBC and whoever would want to sue me.

The chilled London pushed against the collar of John’s coat, making it flap up against his neck. His shoes clicked on the cool pavement, echoing down alleyways and reverberating off of buildings. In his right hand he gripped a brown shopping bag and in his left a pack of beer, the results of a late-night trip to the store. John turned another corner, crossed the street, and found himself in front of the dark wooden door of 221 Baker Street. For a heartbeat he fumbled in his pockets, momentarily fearing that he'd left his keys in the flat, but then his fingers scraped the cold metal and pulled it into his grip. As always, the first stair creaked as he started up the stairs to flat B. The grocery bag rustled as he pulled out the milk and eggs, placing them on the counter. After putting them away, he pulled a beer bottle out of the pack and sat down in his chair. Unbidden, his eyes drifted towards the empty chair across the floor, sending images flashing across his brain like bullets. Only these were slower. After the fall he had been under constant assault, the weapons being memories that tore at his mind and re-opened the scars of his former flatmate. At night, sitting in his chair, when the attacks were at their peak, he’d started drinking, until the gunfire ceased and everything went quiet. Over time the alcohol had almost completely eroded away the grooves that Sherlock had etched; John barely needed the drink. But tonight, the third year anniversary of Sherlock’s death, was different. Three years. Almost all traces of Sherlock were gone, packed away tightly and out of view. All that remained were the chair and, resting on the mantelpiece with its empty smile, the skull. As the hands of the clock made their slow, steady rotation, John sat and stared and drank. As they turned, the only sounds in the room came from him. By midnight he had a buzz, but could no longer stand the ghostly pale image of the skull that lit up the room. Swigging another gulp of beer, he grabbed the skull and placed it in the bag still on the kitchen table. Setting his drink down, he wrapped the head up tightly in its plastic coffin and then cradled the bundle in his arm. Getting a cab to Bart’s was difficult enough without human remains in his arms. The streets were empty, most traffic pushed inside by the wind, so he caught the attention of a driver fairly quick. Inside the cab, London blurred past the windows, bright lights like shooting stars leaving tails of lights skating across his retinas. John leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes to keep his head from spinning. Still, the fireworks outside sank through his closed eyelids and into his brain, sparkling calls for attention.  
  


The ride was a fairly short one, and he was all too soon standing out in the chill again, this time in front of St. Bart’s. With new purpose, he marched inside, barely thinking about the familiar path. After his fall, Sherlock’s lab had been given to Molly Hooper. In the past 3 years John had visited her a few times, but it had taken a while to be able to return to the lab. Ghosts clung to everything, deterring him from spending too long within the brightly lit walls. At the end of the school’s labyrinth halls, he froze. Stuck on the wooden door to the lab, like a white flag waving in battle, was a strip of plain printer paper, on which was written: “CRIME IN PROGRESS; PLEASE DISTURB”. A memory pushed past the alcohol’s barrier and exploded in his mind; an identical message on a door, written with the same phantom print. Was this some kind of sick joke? Or perhaps. . . Grabbing the paper, John peeked in through the window; all of the lights, save the two parallel to the door, were dark. A shot rang out, breaking the barrier between John and the chaos inside. He barreled through the door and, medical instincts kicking in, ran to the first victim within his field of vision. Molly lay collapsed to the right of the door, back against the counter, let arm sprawled under her head. A buzzing in his ears blocked out the cacophony that had swelled up when he entered, but as a knelt and checked for injuries, a single voice filtered through. “ Lestrade. Collection at Bart’s. Yes, that’s the last of them.” The sound wave hit John with the force of an atomic bomb; he slumped back against the wall. Slowly he lifted his eyes, vision centering on the dark figure that was striding towards him. Flag-like, the black coat billowed out as the ghost crouched down next to him. A thin, pale hand tentatively cupped the side of his face. As his sight darkened and he slipped out of consciousness, he barely heard Sherlock whisper, “Come on John. Let’s go home.”

End of Chapter 1


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a bit of some explanation as to where Sherlock was during the three years, why he didn't go back to 221B, etc.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is part of @sign_of_five's (das me! i'm in dat!) project to do fandom works whenever we can.
> 
> Please keep in mind:  
> 1\. Being a semi-dedicated student and complete procrastinator, there will be no schedule behind my updates. Whenever I write a chapter and get time to post it, thats when it will be posted. I am aiming for less than a month between updates, if that makes you feel better.  
> 2\. I'm writing this for a friend. She's sees everything first. I will not post anything until I hand her a paper copy and she reads it. Even if she gets sick with some terrible disease, you will just have to wait. Suck it up.  
> 3\. I'm not from London. These characters are. If you have any suggestions or want to point out some slang that they would never use, that would be mucho appreciated. If you hate, I will ignore you and purposefully kill off all of the characters. Deal.  
> 4\. I don't own the characters. All credit to Doyle and BBC and whoever would want to sue me.

  John awoke and for a moment all was calm, a few images rolling into his mind before slipping away. He grasped at them, even as they trickled easily through his fingers, trying to discern if they were truth or something that his mind had created. Slowly the ghosts pulled back, be they memories or dreams, he knew not. As he reached up to rub the last traces of sleep from his eyes, his fingertips brushed against something much coarser than the sheets of his bed. John dragged himself into a crumpled but upright position and grabbed the scrap of paper that apparently fallen from his pocket. Unfolding the paper, with its familiar, loose handwriting sent a tidal wave of memories crashing around him. The paper was of course the note he'd pulled of the lab door before all hell had broken loose. A dull roar filled his ears as the previous night’s events came back to him in a tsunami of film strips, a movie playing in his mind. And then John recalled the end of the scene.  


  “Sherlock? Sher-!”  


  “John.”  


  The calculated voice had come from behind him, and John desperately twisted around because the owner of that voice-he couldn't be there. It wasn't possible. How was he there? And yet he was; sitting statuesque in the chair next to John’s bed, slowly twirling the bow of his violin, like a memory come to life. It was as if the past three years had simply been erased, or Sherlock had stepped out of his spot in the timeline and smudged the tally that marked his death date. He was dressed in his dark purple, collared shirt and dark dress pants. Those impossibly long legs were crossed; his violin lay across his lap but he kept toying with the bow, in a way that meant he felt uncomfortable, despite his collected appearance.  


  John had written and rewritten and rewritten this moment thousands of times, his trashcan overflowed with rejected scripts, what he would say when, not if, he saw this corpse again. He thought about hitting him, or sending him back to the grave. Or perhaps he would grab him and hold him to this life, not letting go. As thousands of possibilities flipped through his brain, a simple sentence slipped out, told by a broken voice: “Where the hell have you been.”  


  Sherlock seemed to take a moment to collect his thoughts. “ I've been staying with Molly.”  


  “Oh god Molly-where is she? Is she okay?” Her name sent flashing into John’s mind images of her contorted body on the lab floor. John sat up completely, looking around the room as if she might be there.  


  “She’s fine. She’s resting at her apartment at the moment. There’s a bit of bruising along her back and she has a sprained wrist, but she will recover. The intruder threw her against the counter.”  


  “Yeah, who was he? The intruder?”  


  “That was Markus Molotov, the very last of Moriarty's men. Lestrade and I had been tracking down his entire network, since-well…” At this he trailed off and the pride of defeating his enemy gave way to the guilt caused by the collateral damage to his only friend. Lest the unpleasant feeling crack his mask, he avoided John’s gaze and instead traced the design of the wallpaper with his eyes, collecting himself, bracing himself. After a moment, John whispered, “You were dead.” Eyes desperately reaching for Sherlock’s, voice rising. “ You were dead, on the sidewalk. I saw you-I saw you! How the hell-” He choked on the torrent of questions and pain and anger that was trying to escape his throat. Finding his mouth inescapable, they snuck out through his eyes as tears and Sherlock glanced over to find his flat mate silently sobbing. He reached out with his eyes and hand, leaning forward to cup the side of his friend’s face, as he had done the night before.  


  “I am sorry, John. Please forgive me. I wanted to return here and explain as soon as I had recovered, but you seemed…well-adjusted. I had no idea-” John’s lost look broke through his speech, and he back-tracked. “You were with someone. A writer, I believe.” John nodded. He knew exactly who Sherlock meant. The writer who had saved him after Sherlock left. “I didn't want to-that is-you appeared happy.”  


  “Only on the surface.” That was not entirely true; when love, if that’s what it had been, managed to turn his mind from his loss, John had been some form of happy. Those moments, though, were rare. Sherlock was not an easy man to forget; he was not an easy tragedy to recover from.  


  “I apologize, John. If I had known you would have been affected in such a way, I would have not behaved the way I did. Please forgive me.”  


  “Sherlock, you were dead for three years. It’s going to take more than a few apologies and shit explanations for me to forgive you! What the hell kind of excuse is-I just wanted you back!”  


  “I know.”  


  The room stilled. John glanced at his watch, then realized that he still wore his clothes from the previous night, and that he couldn't recall his journey home. “How did I get here anyway?”  


  “ Lestrade drove us while his men got a body bag for Mr. Molotov. He called it déjà vu, except that you were unconscious rather than me.” John couldn't help but smile despite his anger.  


  “And you carried me up here, I suppose?” A nod and then a pause. “Did you…were you sitting there all night? I just mean-well, your room-”  


  “Is storage, yes, I saw. Well I tried sleeping on the couch but found that sleep escaped me, at which point I came up here. I wished to make sure you were alright.”  


  “Um. Thanks.” There was a moment’s pause before John chuckled. Here he was, talking to a ghost about how he’d packed up his room. It was just so unusual. As they sat for a quiet moment, John’s stomach growled, a low rumble that filled the room. Sherlock smirked. “Breakfast?”  


  “Yes please; I’m starving.”  


  “Good. I trust that there is something edible in this flat. Molly is on a diet; she kept absolutely nothing worth eating in her kitchen.”  


  “I thought you looked thinner.”  


  “I see you bought the milk.”  


  “Well it’s not like you were going to.”  


  Entirely unintentionally they slipped back into dance that had been halted at the fall; an endless back and forth, a waltz of words. Neither was leading and neither was following, rather they were moving in sync, two parallel lines that gave and took across the graph. Despite their best intentions, they had fallen back into the same routine that orchestrated their dance, neither one anticipating that the song had been edited, the notes changed, and that now they approached a crescendo. 

End of chapter 2.


End file.
